Captain America was waiting on the steps of the infirmary.
“I’ve got some other masks if you want one,” Allie said, leading the way along the wobbling planks set out between buildings. “I’ve got Hulk, Optimus Prime, and Sarah Palin.”
“Is it important to disguise our identity?”
“I don’t think so. But it does make you feel more badass. Like when guys rob a bank and they’re all wearing scary clown masks? I have a huge girl boner for scary clown masks.”
“Unless you have Mary Poppins, I think I’ll go as I am. But thank you for asking.”
Allie led her through the looming pagan rocks of Monument Park, to a stone altar that would’ve been the perfect place to sacrifice Aslan. Father Storey stood behind it, with the Fireman on his right, and Michael and Ben on his left—an image that Harper thought oddly recalled The Last Supper. Michael even had Judas’s stringy red beard, if none of his malice or fear.
“Allie?” Father Storey raised one hand, palm out, as if in benediction. “I promised your aunt you’d have no part in this. Head down to the bus—you’re watching the gate tonight.”
“I swapped with Mindy Skilling,” Allie said. “Mindy didn’t mind.”
“And I’m sure she won’t mind if you swap back.”
Allie shot a questioning, hostile look at the Fireman. “I al ways go. Since when do I not get to go? Mike is going. He’s only a year older than me. I started the Lookouts, not him. I was the first.”
“The last time you went running around with John, your aunt Carol sat staring out the window, clutching one of your sweaters and praying,” said Father Storey. “She wasn’t praying to God, Allie. She was praying to your mother to keep you safe. Don’t put her through another night like that. Have mercy on her. And have mercy on me.”
Allie went on staring at the Fireman. “You going along with this bullshit?”
“You heard him,” the Fireman said. “Run along, Allie, and don’t give me one of your sixteen-year-old death stares. If you want to have a row with me, it’ll have to be later.”
She glared at him for a moment longer—eyeing him as if trying to decide how best to get even. Then she looked at Michael, opened her mouth as if to plead with him. Mike half turned away, though, scratching his back with his rosewood nightstick, and pretended not to see her staring.
“Fuck you,” Allie said, her voice shaking with anger. “Fuck all of you.”
In the next instant she bolted into the trees. Harper had been able to move like that once; she remembered being sixteen quite vividly.
Father Storey smiled in a way that looked awfully like a wince. “In her own soft-spoken, gentle fashion, she does manage to get her point across, doesn’t she? I would add that compared to her mother, Allie Storey is the very model of restraint.”
“Shoot,” Ben Patchett said. “I forgot to grab a flashlight.”
“No worries, Ben,” the Fireman said, stripping off his left glove. “I brought a light.”
His hand ignited in a gout of blue flame, with a soft whoosh, illuminating a circle ten feet in diameter. The boulders threw monstrous shadows halfway down the hill.
Ben Patchett swallowed heavily as Harper fell in beside him.
“I’ll never get used to that,” he said.
7
They followed the Fireman away from the church and in under the pines, where there were no boards to walk on. But the snow was brittle here, frozen and glassy on the surface, and for the most part they could make their way downhill without leaving any tracks.
Downhill? They seemed to be heading toward the water. Harper was surprised, had expected them to pile into a car.
Harper’s foot went through the polished surface of the snow and she lurched into Ben’s side. He steadied her, then looped his arm through hers.
“Let me help you,” he said. He cast a hooded look at the Fireman’s back and muttered, “Crazy bringing you along.”
A weight and ill-shaped mass in his pocket pressed against her arm and she frowned. She pushed her fingers into his coat pocket and found a revolver: hatched walnut grip, cold steel hammer.
She slipped her arm free.
He glanced at her, half smiling. “You’re supposed to ask if that’s a gun in my pocket or if I’m just happy to see you.”
“Why do you need that?”
“You have to ask?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I thought we’re off to help people, not shoot them.”
“You’re off to help people. I’m on this trip to make sure my favorite nurse gets back to camp in one piece. We don’t know anything about these two men. We don’t know what they were locked up for. Maybe John Rookwood is all right risking your life for a couple outlaws, but I’m not.” His face flushed and he looked down and away. “You ought to know by now how much I care about you, Harp. If something happened—sheesh.”
She put her hand on the back of his arm and squeezed. She hoped he read that squeeze as Thank you for caring and not God, I’m horny, we should really screw sometime. In her experience it was very difficult to offer a man affection and kindness without giving him the impression you were also offering a lay.
He smiled. “Besides. Departmental regulations require any officer transporting a prisoner to carry his firearm at all times. You can give up the badge, but it’s hard to give up the mind-set. Not that I ever really gave up the badge.”
“You still have it?”
“I keep it with my secret decoder ring and the fake mustache I used for undercover work.” He bumped her affectionately with his shoulder.
The snow was the color of blue steel, of gunmetal, in the moonlight.
He mused, “Sometimes I think I ought to put it back on.”
“The fake mustache?” She peered into his features. “I guess you could pull one off without looking too sleazy. You have a good face for a mustache.”
“No. My badge. Sometimes I think this community could use some law. Or at least some justice. Think about this gal who’s running around, helping herself to grub and jewelry. If she comes forward and admits what she did—or if we find her out—is that really going to be the end of it? We’re all just going to hug it out on Father Storey’s say-so?”
“Maybe she could peel potatoes for a week or something.”
“Or we could lock her up for three months, teach her a lesson. I even know where I’d do it. There’s a meat locker below the cafeteria, just about the size of a cell at the county jail. Bring in a cot and—”
“Ben!” she cried.
“What? She wouldn’t freeze. It’s probably warmer in there than in the basement of the church. There hasn’t been any electric for months.”
“That’s disgusting. Solitary confinement in a room that smells like rotten meat. Over a couple cans of milk?”
“And the Portable Mother.”
“Fuck the Portable Mother.”
He flinched.
Father Storey and Michael Lindqvist ambled along ahead of them, Father Storey saying something, a hand on Mike’s back. Mike walked with his nightstick stuck out to one side, rapping it against the occasional tree trunk, like a boy running a stick over the boards of a fence. Ben watched them for a bit, then shook his head and snorted.
“If I was Mike, I’d be relieved to get out of camp and I don’t know if I’d hurry back. He might be in more danger here.”
“From who?” Harper asked.
“From Allie. That girl has a temper. I wouldn’t want to cross her.”
“You think she’s mad Michael didn’t come to her defense?”
“Especially after what they were up to before chapel. I saw the two of them ducked behind a pine at the edge of the woods, making out like they were never going to see each other again. If I was her father, I would’ve—but I’m not, and I guess neither of them are exactly kids anymore.”
“I didn’t know they were a going thing.”
Ben waggled his hand. “On again, off again. Apparently on again.” He smiled at this. When he spoke once more, his voice was pitched low and soft. “Putting the thief in the meat locker might be a kindness. You don’t see that, because you think everyone is as warmhearted as you. Father Storey doesn’t see it either. You and he are two sides of the same coin in that way.”